New Email Features to Boost Email Deliverability Coming Your Way!

Using an email marketing service has it's benefits; you can email tens, hundreds, or thousands of leads and more in a second, personalizing each email as if it were intended for only one specific recipient. With LeadOutcome, the best part is that your leads don't see that it comes from an email marketing service! There is no branding in the emails we send. Leads can also easily manage their subscription status by auto-opting out of emails if they wish. No more manually removing or marking leads as a "do not send" contact. Not all email marketing services are the same though, and we at LeadOutcome pride ourselves in making email marketing easy to use and an enjoyable experience.

Email deliverability can be an issue that small-medium business marketers experience relates to though, regardless how robust the system. If you're uncertain, email deliverability simply the ability for an email to reach the intended inbox. Sounds simple, right? For all intensive purposes, it is. But when you use a mass-email service, you are working in a whole new realm. Here's the uncomplicated process of email, from the click of your send to the 'ding' that the recipient gets when a new message arrives:

You've crafted your email, reviewed it and tested it and are ready to send.

The list of recipients is selected, and you click the send button to get that email to its destinations.

The email goes through the email server, replacing all variables with the proper details (e.g., first name, last name, company, location, etc.).

Emails get batched up to send and are released in one swoop (think of the post office collecting a bunch of mail, sorting by destination, and sending it off).

The sending email server searches for the receiving mail server; if found, it knocks on the door of that mail server, asking if the prefix (the name before @....com) lives there.

If the receiving server does not respond, the message is rejected and an undeliverable message is sent back to the sender, indicating this isn't a valid location. (Considered a hard bounce.)

If the receiving server responds but the prefix doesn't exist, an undeliverable message is sent back to the sender, indicating this isn't a valid user. (Considered a hard bounce.)

If the prefix does exist at the receiving server, the message is let through the gates and a delivered message is sent back to the sender, indicating it accepted the message.

It can get slightly more complicated though, when a message doesn't get through but you know that the email address exists.

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So what's the problem?

Valid email addresses may reject messages for a number of reasons, but they are largely due to spam filters. Typically larger companies and companies who manage their own email servers can set up a spam filter that blocks messages by sender domain, by blacklisting specific IPs or by using an existing blacklist, and other methods. Email marketing platforms will sometimes take a hit and not be able to deliver a message to a lead because of these blocks.

What causes this to happen?

Mass email is typically sent through a single or multiple bulk IP addresses. Email servers that block bulk IP addresses typically experience the most rejections of incoming email; this is employed to protect their servers from potentially malicious malware. As mentioned in MailGun's blog, 66% of all current email traffic is considered spam, which explains why bulk IP addresses tend to be blocked.

How do email marketing platforms like LeadOutcome avoid getting blocked?

LeadOutcome (and other email marketing platforms) maintain a good sender score to ensure that your emails are a lot less likely to get flagged as spam. We regularly check that our sending IPs are not on any blacklists; if it were to ever get on one, we would remediate that immediately.

Is there anything I can do to make my emails more likely to get delivered?

Yes! By maintaining a solid, clean list, you can ensure that your emails on the shared IP get delivered to the intended recipient without issue. Having 250 engaged leads means a lot more for your personal brand and for your emails than having 2500 purchased leads. Purchasing leads is a practice that is not encouraged, as many lists can contain leads that are non-existent (so you wasted your money), wholly uninterested and will quickly mark your emails as spam (causing the IPs sender score to potentially dip), or spamtraps which use a honeypot to collect (and lure) spam. Yes, these are bad for your list. So in short, never buy leads. Earn them through your offerings, gain their trust, and they will grow organically.

We can't discourage you enough from doing this - as it will substantially harm your deliverability for emails. As an example, let's say I have an email account of awesomeemail@gmail.com. If I try and send messages from this address in LeadOutcome, your messages are very unlikely to be delivered to Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or other major email providers. The reason for this is that in recent months, many email providers have become far more strict on validating SPF records, and your email will not appear to come from a valid domain, since LeadOutcome cannot authenticate as one of these providers. If you need to use your Gmail or Yahoo account, etc. and don't have any other options for sending email, you can look into using LeadOutcome with SMTP if your provider supports it, an option listed below.

Is there anything else I can do so I can have full control over my sender score, and step away from a shared IP?

There is now! LeadOutcome offers three new email features to amp up your sending capabilities and provide a better experience for you and your leads.

Sending email through your own domain

Currently, when you send email, you are sending your message through LeadOutcome with the reply-to set to your email address. With the ability to send email through your own domain, you'll no longer see 'via contactinstantly.net' in your sent emails. This setup requires access to your DNS records with your domain provider, and our support team will assist you in setting up the necessary configuration. In addition to no longer seeing "via contactinstantly.net", you'll ensure maximum deliverability for your emails, since they will be authenticated via your own domain!

Enable SMTP sending through LeadOutcome

This feature would allow you to send emails from LeadOutcome, but also see those sent emails in your sent mailbox. You could use this for compliance reasons (if you work in a company that legally requires you to have an on-hand record of all email communications, whether service or marketing messages), or to have a personal record of all the emails you send including those from LeadOutcome. This setup requires access to your email servers with your hosting provider.

Dedicated IP to manage your own email reputation

If the idea of your email reputation riding on that of a shared IP ruffles your feathers, you may want to consider getting a dedicated IP. Generally speaking, you'd want to be a mass-email sender as a dedicated IP is a big responsibility to hold. Getting your own IP is costly, even outside of the scope of email marketing, so for this type of investment, you'd want to make sure that you're getting enough traction with your leads to make it worth your while.

The cost for this service is a $100 monthly maintenance charge.

Can I still take advantage of email marketing even without these really cool services?

Absolutely! Again, we take the utmost care when it comes to our sender score and clean IP record to ensure that your email marketing experience is smooth and enjoyable. These services are a nice add-on for those who feel they would greatly benefit from them, but don't feel like you're missing out if you can't get your hands on a nifty new feature. We do everything we can to make sure your emails get where they need to go, just as you would expect.